


Language Lessons

by Owlix



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Chirolinguistics, Fluff, Gen, M/M, cybertronian linguistic history, non-verbal language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-24
Updated: 2014-08-24
Packaged: 2018-02-14 13:48:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2194062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owlix/pseuds/Owlix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Do you speak hand?” Drift asked, in both languages at the same time. He kept his voice soft, and pressed the words against Ratchet’s palm and fingers slow and clear.</p><p>“A little,” Ratchet said back in neocybex, his hands still.</p><p>Drift spoke out loud as he pushed and pulled the words against Ratchet’s hands. “Want to learn a little more?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Language Lessons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Enfilade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enfilade/gifts).



Drift took Ratchet’s hands, palms pressed against palms, and loosely interlocked their fingers. Ratchet’s hands tensed, then relaxed again.

“Do you speak hand?” Drift asked, in both languages at the same time. He kept his voice soft, and pressed the words against Ratchet’s palm and fingers slow and clear.

“A little,” Ratchet said back in neocybex, his hands still.

Drift spoke out loud as he pushed and pulled the words against Ratchet’s hands. “Want to learn a little more?”

“Drift.” Ratchet spoke the word half warning, half tired plea. _Not now. Not today._

“Come on, Ratch. Even an old bot can still learn new tricks.” Drift smiled as he spoke, aura and tone of voice playful and teasing, but Ratchet took it all wrong. He pulled away, working his hands stubbornly free.

“I’m surprised you know any,” Drift said, leaving the rest unspoken. Before they’d been on opposite sides of a battleground, Drift and Ratchet had existed at polar ends of old Cybertron’s class structure.

“Learning a bit of hand was kind of a requirement for working in the Dead End,” Ratchet said, averting his optics. “Sometimes we got patients who couldn’t communicate any other way. Never understood why it’s so popular down there.” _Among certain kinds of mechs._ Ratchet didn't speak the words, but they hung in the air unspoken between them. Dead-enders and leakers, construction-mechs and miners, disposable-castes and, as Drift had learned after joining the Autobots, M.T.O.s. The underclasses.

“It’s because the language was was invented in the mines.”

Ratchet looked up. From his expression, he clearly hadn’t known. Just one more piece of history that had gotten lost among the dust-clouds of war.

“The mines were too loud for audio speech, and too full of dust for reliable wireless. So the miners made up a language they could use underground. They used their hands because the rest of them was too heavily plated to feel much sensation.”

“Stupid and impractical. Why didn’t they just--” Ratchet started to ask, but then his mouth abruptly shut. “Ah.”

“Miners weren’t given written-language communications by default,” Drift said, confirming what Ratchet had already figured out. “And it takes time to learn that kind of thing when you can’t just download the skill.”

“Megatron tell you all that?” Ratchet asked, huffing and withdrawing, big arms folding over his chest.

It was such an obvious goad that Drift didn’t even rise to it. He willed his aura into a plea for peace. He wasn't here to fight, and he wasn't willing to let Ratchet reflexively push him away.

After a long moment of awkward silence, Ratchet cringed. As if in apology, he offered his hands. Drift took them.

“The language is iconistic,” Drift said, “not phonetic. The grammar is similar to neocybex, though.”

“I said I know a little,” Ratchet muttered, gruff. “I’m not utterly ignorant.”

Drift smiled. “Oh. Sorry.” He adjusted his hands, settling them in against Ratchet’s palm and shifting his fingers until they seamlessly interlocked. He adjusted their position: elbows bent, shoulders loose, bodies close enough that Drift could feel the familiar pull of Ratchet’s electromagnetic field and the steady hum of his aura -- of the faint energy of his living spark.

Ratchet was scowling at him from under his helm, but he didn’t pull away.

“What’s your name?” Drift spoke the words slowly in neocybex as he signed them.

Ratchet grimaced. “I don’t remember how to sign it.”

Drift’s hands moved, slow. “Ratchet,” he said, lingering over each syllable of the spoken word. The sign in hand was the same as the object - a gear that moved in only one direction and locked into place, incapable of going backwards.

Ratchet signed his own name back, fingers working the word against Drift's hands with their usual grace. _What's your name?_ Ratchet said back in hand, copying Drift's earlier motions. Drift smiled wider, optics beaming.

“Pleased to meet you, Ratchet,” he said aloud as his hands worked the words slowly into Ratchet’s palms and fingers. “My name is Drift.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Some Dratchets for Enfilade. Hope it makes you smile :)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Lessons from Ravage or Learning to Trust former Enemies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3140789) by [Beautyofgrey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beautyofgrey/pseuds/Beautyofgrey)




End file.
